Arctic winds cut through London, exacerbating an already harsh winter and causing the snows of February to linger into March. The cobblestones were transformed into a generous layer of muddy slush as horses and carriages passed through the streets with their usual ferocity. The gray sky, thick fog, and slush, which splattered over anything and everything daring to venture out of doors, quickly turned the beautiful capital into a dirty heap of depression.

Kathryn understood exactly why so many decided to quit such a condensed package of cold, miserable filth for the solitude of the country or warmth of Italy.

They were sane.

The unlucky few who were forced to stay or too dense to leave would not part with the warmth of their own parlors without promise of diversion in a well-lit, fashionable, and quite clean venue. Kathryn might have been born with enough brains to avoid London’s winters, but she had never had the best of luck, which was why she, along with a couple hundred of her peers, had crammed into Covent Garden to attend an opera they had all been to before.

Kathryn sat patiently in her seat well into the second aria as the latecomers straggled in to take their seats. However, now that everyone was nicely settled and properly pretending to enjoy the production below, Kathryn was slipping out. Thankfully, Lord Huntly and her mother, Lady Grenville, were seated in front of her, so they shouldn’t see her leave. As for the gentleman sitting next to her, well, he ought to wake up in about half an hour.

Kathryn had business to tend to that she had been painstakingly piecing together for weeks, important business for the Home Office. The Home Office might not exactly be aware she was taking care of it for them, but it was something they would be grateful to have done once it was off their plate. Surely.

She was bored with the little tasks the Home Office had been handing her, so she had taken the file from the Director of Covert Affairs’ desk when she had brought him the fruitcakes. Father’s old military crony, he might be; organized, he was not. He hadn’t even noticed it missing. Now she finally had an adventure amidst the humdrum of the London season.

And here she thought this would be just another year of enduring pitying glances and barely veiled insults toward being six and twenty and unwed. As if that were all a female could want in life. A man who could tempt Kathryn to a life of boring matronly duties did not exist, not after the horrors her aunt had faced under a husband’s booted heel.

As she had expected, the crème-paneled hall was empty. She picked up her skirts so she would not trip over them as she hurried through the halls and down the stairs toward the foyer. Thoughts swirled in her head of shadowed figures in capes and hoods, exchanging envelopes in dark alleys and whispering. Surely, it was not truly that exciting, but her heart began racing all the same, and she had to suppress a girlish giggle when her eyes fixed on the large doors opening out into the street.

“Lady Kathryn?”

The masculine voice calling after her had her nearly toppling over her own feet. Then a quick look over her shoulder left her momentarily speechless.

What in heaven’s name did he want? The notorious Marquess of Ainsley had said barely ten words to her in all the years she had been in London, for which she was eternally thankful. What could he possibly want with her now?

Why now?

A quick scan of the ornate and overly large foyer confirmed they were the only two occupying it. It was most definitely her he was calling after. Could he have made a mistake? Perhaps he had forgotten how respectable ladies did not speak to rakes at the opera, certainly not alone.

Kathryn let down her skirts and began a sedate pace toward the door. Only twenty feet or so to the street, it took all her willpower not to run.

“Lady Kathryn Bryant,” he repeated, sounding pleasantly surprised and a great deal closer.

Oh, fishtails!

Kathryn turned with the most pleasant smile she could manage. Whoever had ended up with her portion of luck, she hoped to God, they needed every confounded ounce of it.

“Lord Ainsley, what a pleasure,” she greeted politely.

He dipped his chin in lieu of a bow when he reached her. Piercing, gray eyes studied her from underneath a tousled mop of waves as pitch-black as his reputation. The man was far too attractive for his own good. The tall, hard body attached to that face was quite simply unfair.

“Have you no escort this evening?” he asked with a hint of a smile.

“Of course I do,” she answered simply. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She did have an escort, just not a conscious one.

“Indeed? And where is this elusive person?”

“Mr. Jeffery Peters is attending the performance,” she said. “It’s one of our favorites.”

“Is that so?” he mused. Then his brow knit. “Wait… what?”

“He’s attending the performance,” she repeated reluctantly. Attending wasn’t quite the word.

He shook his head. “No, the other bit.”

“It’s one of our favorites?” Kathryn frowned, uncertain why it should matter.

“That’s what I thought you said,” he muttered. He shot a quick glance down the hall toward the boxes. Then his quizzical expression turned back to her. “We are attending the same abomination, are we not?”

“It’s a wonderful production!” she shot back.

“Is it?”

Her lips pursed into a mutinous line. He was waiting for an explanation, but Kathryn was not about to waste a lifetime explaining art to a caveman.

He sighed. “Opera is an art, Kathryn. Not all of it is good, but few can discern between brilliant and god-awful. Take this one, for example.”

As he spoke, her jaw nearly dropped. She stood speechlessly as the Marquess of Ainsley went on to explain what made this opera so insufferable to him. Most of his issue was with the lyrics. Apparently, the marquess spoke Italian, and he was less than impressed with what he called nonsensical dribble assaulting his ears.

Kathryn bit the inside of her cheek, managing to control herself with a blank look. “Incredible,” she muttered when he paused. “In that case, I would hate to keep you from leaving such a disgrace, my lord. Good evening.”

She turned to go, but he stepped around her, blocking her path to the street.

“Are you not leaving?” she asked with forced calm.

He shook his head, looking at her as though she were mad. “A gentleman could never allow a lady to wander off on her own. I am afraid your Jonas Pickles—”

“Jeffrey Peters,” she muttered.

“—whomever he is, acted terribly deficient as an escort and a gentleman,” he went on. “I can’t imagine what sort of riffraff your mother is allowing you to associate with.”

A rake was lecturing her on her choice of companions? Of all the insufferable, arrogant boneheads!

“I am no longer a child for you to lecture, Ainsley,” she reminded him coolly.

“Not that it ever did any good,” he muttered.

“Because they were unnecessary—are unnecessary.”

He watched her silently, looking unconvinced.

“Don’t you have a club or something to attend?” she asked. “I assumed gentlemen of your ilk stayed out all night, drinking, gaming, and whoring.”

“It will wait.”

“Of course it will.”

He would obviously rather frustrate her all night.

She looked past him to the door. It had begun to drizzle during their little chat. Just brilliant. Bad luck was one thing, but this? This was about as unlucky as one could get without being dead.

He shifted, tilting his head to the side. “Are you not afraid of the monsters and goblins walking about London at night?”

“Of course not.”

“You ought to be,” he mused, “conversing as you are with one of the worst monsters of them all.”

Her attention snapped back to him. “What a ridiculous claim.”

Ainsley might have grown up to become a libertine with not a shred of honor, but she wouldn’t consider him the worst.

He assessed her with the barest hint of amusement. “Is it proof you want?”

“No, thank you,” she said flatly. “In this particular field, you may strive for excellence. I shall not be responsible for challenging you to become worse than you are.”

He laughed, and Kathryn’s heart did an uncomfortable flip in her chest.

“Good night, Lord Ainsley,” she said, hastily pushing the painfully familiar feeling to the back of her mind. Once again, she stepped around him, and once again, she found him blocking her way.

He offered his arm. “Am I escorting you back to your box or to your carriage, Lady Kathryn?”

Her choices were very clear: her box, her carriage, or stand here to be annoyed by him for all eternity, or at least until the end of the opera, which would feel like an eternity.

She sighed with grudging resignation. She didn’t have time for this. “You may hail me a hack.”

Kathryn curled her hand into the crook of his elbow, his heat burning through her glove. As they stepped out into the drizzling night, she did her best to ignore the hard, attractive male blocking most of the wind.

Ainsley turned up his coat collar against the biting wind and whistled loudly to alert a nearby hackney. Across the street, the coachman urged his reluctant horses toward the theater. When the small, two-seater carriage stopped, and the danger of becoming unforgivably covered in mud was at least lessened, he walked her to the door and helped her in.

“Thank you for your escort, Lord Ainsley,” she said. “I am sure I never would have found a carriage without you.”

Without him, she wouldn’t have needed one.

He leaned into the open doorway, his broad frame blocking the wind from entering the small space. “It isn’t finding a hack that’s dangerous.”

“Ah, yes. Monsters and goblins.” She nodded. “Although, strangely enough, I saw none, my lord.”

“No?” One dark brow winged high.

“You mean you?” She choked back the laughter the thought evoked. There was absolutely no danger of her falling prey to Ainsley’s charms, despite his Olympian body and the annoying little thing his smile did to her chest. She was more likely to brain him with whatever was handy.

His mouth opened, but no sound came out, and he clamped it shut, regarding her soberly. Then he climbed into the carriage and pulled her into him. Kathryn felt a wave of panic as his arms surrounded her, his heat seeping into her, burning her.

“Get your hands off me,” she managed calmly, trying to ignore how very close his face was to hers, how very close all of him was.

“What will you do if I don’t?” he asked with a smug grin. “Scream?”

If someone found them together now, she would be ruined. She had no choice except to stay silent, and he knew it, the beast.

“I gave you fair warning.” His low murmur rumbled over her as his breath fanned her lips, leaving them tingling. Confident gray eyes bore into hers. “You might enjoy it,” he added. “The things I can do with my hands, my lips… my tongue.”

He was teasing her, and it was working. Her pulse quickened when his cheek brushed against hers, grazing her skin with just a hint of stubble. The scent of sandalwood, musk, and male seemed to fill the entire carriage, muddling her mind. Her fingers drummed against his chest impatiently in an attempt to hide the tremble in the traitorous things.

“By gad, I might enjoy it even more,” he murmured just below her ear. “When did you become so lovely?” His lips lightly grazed her neck, and her breath hitched.

They were the empty words of a rake, which he quite possibly used on hundreds before her, just as her uncle had her aunt.

She had always thought herself above such insincere flattery, so why did she have to fight the urge to melt into him? Perhaps it was because she had been dreaming of doing just that ever since she was sixteen when she had realized he was very attractive and possibly good for more than just riding and stealing sweet rolls with.

Kathryn closed her eyes, feeling the heat of his breath on her lips. His fingers lifted her chin and his thumb brushed her bottom lip. She felt his nose just barely touching hers.

The beautiful, irritating rake was going to kiss her. Now—after he had run off to war and returned a debauched rascal, losing every drop of chivalry, which had first endeared him to her—now he was going to kiss her.

The rogue.

Even as she thought she would rather slap him silly than suffer the kiss she ought not to want, the intimate touch fell away, and his arm around her loosened.

“I hope you have learned your lesson,” he said as he relaxed beside her.

Kathryn glared back at him, speechless, as she warred between scratching his eyes out and attempting to strangle him.

“You should have struck me,” he said casually.

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“With your habits, I imagine you will have the opportunity with another unlucky fellow in the not so distant future.” He made a thrusting motion, touching the heel of his hand to the underside of his nose. “Do it like this. Chances are it won’t stop him, but at least someone might catch him if they have a blood trail to follow.”

“How comforting,” she ground out as he stepped down from the carriage.

“I advise against gallivanting about alone altogether,” he said, propping his elbows on either side of the carriage door. “London is riddled with monsters.”

“Yes,” she glowered. “I see that now.”

He laughed. “Good evening, Lady Kathryn. I wish you safe travels home.” He snapped the door firmly shut then turned back toward the theater.

He was gone. Finally. Now if only the dashed fluttering in her stomach had gone with him.

With a shuddering breath, she gave her directions to the coachman. The carriage lurched in motion for only a few minutes then creaked to a stop, and she was let out. The hack had taken her around to the opposite side of the theater. She was not expecting to leave Covent Garden, so she had set the meeting up nearby. She might have lost a little time with the detour, but her contact would have waited.

Her slippers made an audible squishing sound when she landed, freezing liquid seeping in through the thin material. She was lucky her slippers were tied to her feet, or else they would have been sucked right off.

She had only made it a few steps when the horses were pushed into action. Muddy slush flung up from the wheels as they turned, coating the back of her dark blue cloak in tiny brown dots.

Kathryn sighed heavily through a shiver without bothering to assess the damage. She need not look to know her entire ensemble hadn’t a chance, but what would that matter? She had to trudge all the way around the front of the theater to get to the right alley, anyhow. She could thank Lord Obtrusive for that.

Snow mixed with drizzle came down in a gentle haze, and by the time she passed the entrance to the theater, the warmth from the lantern looked incredibly enticing. If there hadn’t been a man standing in the shadows by the theater door, she would have stopped to warm her hands.

Once she passed the doors and turned into the next alley, it was not more than two minutes before she reached the rendezvous point to meet her contact.

The alley was narrow. The yellow light of a small lantern illuminated tiny specks of drizzle, adding to the mush that covered the cobblestones and rubbish lining the walkway. Her face, hands, and feet were stinging from the cold, and it was all she could do to control her shivering.

It was almost over. After all the trouble of setting up this dashed mission, Ainsley’s fraying of her nerves and utter destruction of her patience, topped off with the ghastly weather not suitable for intelligent life, she was finally here.

She waited until a shadowed figure appeared out of a doorway not far ahead of her. He looked at her for a long moment before glancing around then slowly stepping toward her.

Kathryn took a deep, steadying breath, her teeth not chattering quite loudly enough to drown out her own heartbeat. Then she stepped out to meet him.

The closer she came, the better she could make out his features. He was a stocky individual with a limp on his right, but that was all she could discern in the dim light and with him wrapped up in so many rags.

“Are you Mr. White?” she asked.

He grunted a barely intelligible yes.

“Right. Then this is for you. I expect you know where to take it?” She handed him a folded envelope from her reticule.

He peeked into the envelope then, seemingly satisfied, stuffed it into his inner pocket. With another grunt, he turned to leave, and she watched him limp back through the same door he had emerged from moments before. Then she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the night air.

The wind cut through her heavy cloak as though it were laced with holes. She was numb to her knees, her elbows, and her neck. She wasn’t getting out of this without a sniffle at best, pneumonia at worst, but it was worth it. She had done it! Too dangerous, indeed. If not for the weather and Ainsley, it might have been considered uneventful.

She turned and shuffled back toward the main street, a curl of self-satisfaction pulling up the corners of her mouth. However, she had barely taken five steps before she heard a sloshing sound behind her.

She turned on her heel to peer into darkness, the only light being the small lantern swinging over the door with tiny specks of drizzle coming down around it.

She pulled open the strings of her reticule with stiff fingers to have a reassuring glance at her small pistol. She should not have any need of it. No one, not even a pea-brained monster, would be dense enough to linger out here.

Still…

She started again toward the theater with renewed vigor, reminding herself she had seen no one enter the alleyway whilst she was there. Besides, if someone were lurking in the shadows, they would have already had her.

This time, the sloshing sounded a mere few yards behind her, far too close for her to waste time fumbling for her pistol with numb fingers. In a heartbeat, she broke out into a sprint with her hands hiking her damp skirts to her knees. She managed only two clumsy strides before she was caught.

A heavy blow to her temple pitched her into the stone wall. She fell limply to the ground, and her reticule along with her pistol was flung far out of reach in the snow.

As she hit, specks of light flooded her vision, but the lancing pain from the blow cut through the fog, and she cried out.

She didn’t see the iron boot that drove into her ribs. It knocked the air from her lungs with only a shallow breath reluctantly seeping back in. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could manage to block out the pain—mind over matter—but the pain was edging in on her mantra.

Mind… throb… over… throb… matter… throb!

Each throb intensified, shattering her brain and lungs into splinters. She opened her eyes, but the world spun and lights still danced around her.

Another blow, this time to the middle of her back, sent a shaft of pain as it drove out what little air she had been able to work into her stinging lungs. The heavy blows kept coming, and she soon lost count of how many times she was struck.

When it finally stopped, she felt blood trailing across her forehead. Each drop of blood echoed in her ear as the rest of her battered body finally began to numb.

Hot tears welled in her eyes. Silence was swallowing up the sound of carriages and horses from the street barely half a block away when one final blow stilled everything.

* * *

Grey was abnormally irritable as he watched the hackney rumble off around the corner.

He was caught off guard, that was all. He had rambled on enough to irritate a saint. Why the hell had she suffered it for so long? She was supposed to go back to her box like a good little girl, perhaps blush at being caught, or give him some cockamamie excuse. It turned out she was one of the prickliest and most intractable women Grey had ever laid eyes on, a rebellious cactus wrapped in muslin.

Grey lifted his hat to drag a hand through his already disheveled hair. Before he had even agreed to help, he had understood precisely why Grenville wanted someone to keep an eye on her. How many galas and dinner parties had Grey gone to and caught her wandering off on one of her little excursions? Even so, walking about the private rooms at a house party was one thing. Strolling about London alone in the dead of night was entirely different.

She didn’t need someone to keep an eye on her. She needed a full-time caretaker, and Grey wasn’t it. He would thank Grenville for saving his sorry life some other way, any other way.

He fell back into his usual, black expression as he removed a pouch of tobacco and a small paper. He sprinkled tobacco onto the slender strip, cinching the pouch again with his teeth then tucking it back inside his coat. The paper was rolled, licked, and stuck between his lips before the end was lit from a lantern hanging by the door.

He supposed he ought to smoke like an Englishman now that he was back instead of smoking what the French soldiers called cigarettes. He had become fond of them whilst infiltrating Napoleon’s army during the war, because it was easier than carrying around a pipe, and he had never been overly fond of cheroots. He had never been overly fond of smoking in general. He didn’t understand why he continued to do it.

Even as that thought bounced around his brain, he took a deep draw and found a shadowed wall to lean on. He tipped his hat down to cover his eyes, shielding them from the bursts of wind that whipped through his little corner. There he stayed, unmoving, the only show of life being a bright red glow and a puff of smoke.

It was almost as cold as when summer had been skipped altogether in 1816. Still, he would rather be out here than risk being seen inside. There was no one he cared to converse with in there, and he was in no big hurry to get back to his box and his mistress, who might or might not be his mistress after he had left so abruptly to run after Kathryn. He didn’t expect to be forgiven soon. For now, he would rather stand outside in the godforsaken, freezing cold, smoking his tobacco and ignoring the rest of humanity.

If only there were such a place where he could ignore the rest of bloody humanity. In fact, if he gave it thought, the interruption a moment later was not all that surprising.

He did not budge an inch when, from the corner of his beaver hat, he noticed a bundle of mud-spattered muslin irritatingly similar to the one he had just sent off.

His jaw tensed as he watched Kathryn round the building into an alley.

A bleeding alley, for Christ’s sake!

The end of the cigarette burned a bright red as he took a deep drag then chucked it into the slush. He slowly exhaled a long stream of smoke as he stared after her from under the brim of his hat.

He ought to follow her just to make sure she didn’t get herself killed.

He lifted his hat from his eyes and began to stalk after her, but then stopped himself short. He should not be the one to go after her. He might, just might, turn her over his knee and give her the spanking her father never would. The temptation would be too much for him to resist. Then he would tie her to his own carriage and drag her home. She would be ruined for sure, and Grey was not about to marry the chit. Kathryn would be ruined, and Grenville would kill him.

Even if he didn’t kill Grey, it would hardly be a surprise if Grenville personally flogged him in Hyde Park. Or he might decide to cripple Grey, instead.

He clamped his jaw shut and decided to find someone else to go after her. He hoped for her sake that whoever it was would find her before she got herself into too much trouble.

With a dark scowl, he turned to stalk back inside to the boxes. Somewhere in Huntly’s box was a Mr. Jermie Peckers who would soon be freezing his prick off, running after Grenville’s rebellious cactus. Alias: Lady Kathryn.